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We should never idolize a person (in my opinion). Here are some things Buffet has done that I admire (notice that phrasing): - He consistently communicated w

by sethev 9mo ago

We should never idolize a person (in my opinion). Here are some things Buffet has done that I admire (notice that phrasing): - He consistently communicated with shareholders of Berkshire in a straight-forward and transparent way in his letters and annual reports. If you read these documents, I believe that you will have a solid understanding of how he built Berkshire. - He maintained a disciplined approach to investing and managing risk over 60+ years. - He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old. Our society has become moralistic. It's so much more useful to identify behaviors to learn from - either to emulate or to avoid - than to debate whether various public figures are good or bad people. That said, it makes me a little sad that we've read the last of his annual letters.

xeromal 9mo ago
I appreciate this viewpoint. Thanks for sharing.
twodave 9mo ago
I agree, however I don’t think the last two of your bullets are necessarily something to learn from on the surface.
- rhubarbtree 9mo ago
  Disagree. The last one is important. You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy.
  - twodave 9mo ago
    This is what I’m talking about. You’re assuming a lot about why and how people move.
    - UqWBcuFx6NV4r 9mo ago
      Nowhere did anybody say “moving house for any reason is bad”. Buffet could’ve moved if he wanted to, I presume. So, evidently, he didn’t have any of those ‘other reasons’. What we *can^ say is that he didn’t move, which shows that he didn’t allow lifestyle inflation to extend to his place of residence.
      - twodave 9mo ago
        No they said we can all learn from it. I understood the implication, I just reject the stated idea that that lesson is to “live in one house for your entire adult life”.
  - brk 9mo ago
    Though Buffet has kept that first house, he also bought several others along the way.
  - KPGv2 9mo ago
    It will if you have had four children after 28yo.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - JKCalhoun 9mo ago
    It's true (I live in Omaha). He is still in the same house. I didn't grow up here—my wife did. Very early on, when I first visited Omaha, she drove me by his place. After three decades or so in California, I retired and we moved back to her hometown. Buffett is still there.
    - theonething 9mo ago
      Like anyone can just drive up to his house? Doesn't seem safe for such a high profile billionaire's residence to be so accessible.
      - matthewbauer 9mo ago
        I went by it a few weeks ago. There's a gate on the driveway, and I assume some kind of security presence. Probably no different than anyone under constant public scrutiny.
      - tstrimple 9mo ago
        Wait until you learn about the Hollywood Hills! I'm so excited for you.
  - ronbenton 9mo ago
    >You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Well that seems like an assumption! Plenty of people are happier with nicer things. I don't think we need to tell people what should make them happy.
    - incanus77 9mo ago
      Sure, but wisdom can be shared about what is less likely to make you happy.
    - dorfsmay 9mo ago
      But commercialism keeps telling people that only nicer things can make them happy.
    - joquarky 9mo ago
      That happy feeling only lasts about six weeks. Happiness is unsustainable. However, contentment is an attainable goal.
      - artdigital 9mo ago
        I bought a bigger nicer TV (the biggest I ever bought) about 4 years ago and it still brings me joy to this day every time I use it So no, not only 6 weeks
        globular-toast 9mo ago
        My 14" portable CRT I had when I was a teenager gave me joy every time I used it. My first car cost me less than 2k and gave me joy for 5 years. You are now unable to get joy from a TV smaller than the largest one you've ever bought. Many people are unable to get joy from a car costing under 10k, let alone 2k. The things you own end up owning you.
        nl 9mo ago
        You are putting words in their mouth there. You seem very sure about what does and doesn't make other people happy!
  - inetknght 9mo ago
    > You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Speak for yourself. There are a lot of aspects to being happy, and having to not want for things certainly helps.
    - BuckRogers 9mo ago
      But you can do that without any money.
      - Nevermark 9mo ago
        > You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever > But you can do that without any money. Well... Material things can contribute to happiness, or detract. Balancing the things we spend our life on, relative to an understanding of what makes us happy, is going to be an idiosyncratic exercise. Assuming that X won't contribute to the happiness of person Y is some deep projection. There seem to be many kinds of happiness too. Would I remain happy if I lost my house? Yes. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that. But would I feel as fulfilled? No. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that.
        BuckRogers 9mo ago
        Very disingenuous answer. That's not what I was responding to. I was responding to this- There are a lot of aspects to being happy, and having to not want for things certainly helps. I would give you a better answer here but it appears you thought misquoting the conversation was clever so I'll simply leave you corrected.
    - _heimdall 9mo ago
      You will never not want for things, no matter how much you have.
      - spectralista 9mo ago
        It is actually the opposite. The less things you have, the less things you will want. I even experience this with food. If I am on a strict diet for 2 weeks and then have a "cheat" meal, a previously normal meal feels like a satisfying feast. If I splurge on food for 2 weeks, even 3/4th a pizza doesn't satisfy. I just want the other 1/4th. It is really why we have so much wealth as a society but so much discontent. It is like believing there is some amount of alcohol that would satisfy the alcoholic. It just grows the desire for more while contentment is harder and harder to achieve. I am pretty sure this is just a property of the dopaminergic system.
  - dheera 9mo ago
    Meh. If you have the resources, buy whatever makes you happy. If a bigger house makes you happy because you have space for your hobbies and you don't need to fight with your family members for space, buy a bigger house. The whole "money doesn't bring happiness" thing is bullshit unless you are a Buddha. A mansion in Malibu isn't going to make me happy, because I wouldn't know what the hell to do in Malibu. An upgrade from a 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom home with a garage so I don't have to smell laser cutter fumes anymore and hack a ventilation system out a bedroom window? That very well might.
    - scott_w 9mo ago
      > An upgrade from a 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom home with a garage so I don't have to smell laser cutter fumes anymore and hack a ventilation system out a bedroom window? That very well might. As someone who upgraded from a 2 bedroom flat to a 3 bedroom house with a garage, I concur. Having a place to store my bikes and other “dirty” tools that’s not inside was such an improvement to my quality of life that I tell people to always look for a half decent garage when they buy. Especially if they also like cycling!
  - dilawar 9mo ago
    "Happiness can't buy me money" -- Some actor
  - cortesoft 9mo ago
    Yeah, but if the first house you buy is a two bedroom at 28 when you are single, it isn't bad to buy a bigger house when you have a family and 3 kids.
  - scott_w 9mo ago
    That’s because you haven’t tried buying better bicycles. I assure you that every new bike I buy makes me happier.
    - globular-toast 9mo ago
      It doesn't make you happier, it's just that you became unhappy and the new bike was necessary to temporarily make you happy again. Happiness is binary. You're either happy with where you are or where you're heading or you're not.
      - scott_w 9mo ago
        > It doesn't make you happier It sounds to me like you haven’t rode a bike in a long time. I recommend you try it and get back to me.
        globular-toast 9mo ago
        I own several and have ridden thousands upon thousands of miles. When I got my first bike as a kid, a cheap "mountain bike" with 24" wheels that probably weighed more than my current road bike, I was at maximum happiness. I was not at only 40% happiness because it didn't have a carbon frame or a Di2 groupset from the future. I was at 100. Later when I got my first road bike I was at 100% happiness again. But nothing can make me happier than I was with that first, heavy bicycle-shaped object. It might equal it but it's impossible to surpass.
  - Jare 9mo ago
    Kinda depends on the size of your current one.
  - chollida1 9mo ago
    > You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Hard disagree here. Ask a 4 person family stuffed into a one bedroom condo if buying a larger 3 bedroom home would make them happier, I'd imagine to 99.99999% of them the answer is yes. I upgraded my road bike 2 years ago from an entry level one to a nice racing bike and each weekend I ride a 100km route, that sure as heck makes me happier than riding the old slower and heavier bike. We just took our extended family on a vacation for a week. Money sure as heck made us happier in that instance. It is true that cash can't fix all issues in life but any one who says money can't make you happy is either lying or doesn't have money. Run a simple thought experiment in your head. If you woke up tomorrow under crushing credit card and medical debt and it was suddenly paid off, would that make you happier?
- _heimdall 9mo ago
  Avoiding scaling your lifestyle with tour current wealth seems like an extremely important lesson people could learn here. Very few people know what "enough" means to them. Its probably worth noting that I mean "enough" in the context of consumption and physical goods. "Enough" wealth doesn't really matter, its only a number in a database or a piece of paper until you spend it.
  - pm90 9mo ago
    To a certain extent this is true. You shouldn’t be going into debt just because your income level allows you to get more loans etc. But once you reach a certain income threshold it doesn’t really matter. So what was the point of him living a frugal, simple lifestyle? I would argue that its just something he was used to and found joy in, and thats ok. Some people like that. Others might want to use their money to unlock new experiences that come with it. Thats ok too.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - throwmeoutplzdo 9mo ago
      Sure, and of course the elephant in the room is overconsumption and planetary overload, which get unlocked too on a bigger scale as a result of similar thinking. Which ends does unlocking potentially endless ”experiences” serve? Our personal disconnect from nature is not separate from our collective disconnect from nature.
  - crossroadsguy 9mo ago
    Not only that, but it’s important. Needless to say I am not comparing net-worths :) My rent spend started increasing around 4-5th year (steeply) of starting my first job and I saw it and kinda stopped/curbed it at somewhere like 7th year. It has remained there (give or take) because it had reached a really good level (below luxury or ultra premium so to speak) wrt my city’s general rental trends and spends (of course inflation factored in). It’s been 8 years since and I have been without a job for last two years (a bit by choice, if certain things can really be called choice) and pretty much my other spending trends also kinda plateaued around those years (experience spends kept going up slowly but I find them easier to manage). I can’t explain how much it has helped me when I have been living on savings for straight 2 years now. Not just the specific relative smaller amount but more so the predictability of it.
- conductr 9mo ago
  The last one is key to my entire value system as a person. I have had some financial wins in life and try not to let it impact my day to day. I avoid, sometimes with great effort, flashy things (I’ve been tempted to by exotic cars as an example but have found if I just rent one for a day or two that urge goes away, it’s just a toy to me). I usually say I’m not materialistic, but I am at times, and what I strive to be is humble, modest, and invisible. I don’t want other people seeing me as flaunting wealth. It’s not who I want to be or how I want my kids to see me act. That said, I do, like Buffet, live in a nice house. I’m not depriving myself. But it’s also very approachable by any successful employee of a company (maybe salary of a director or VP of any large company could afford it). It doesn’t represent what I could afford if I wanted to really get into the elite neighborhoods of my city. I don’t really enjoy people in those areas. They tend to always talk about money in one way or another (vacations, private schools, cars, houses, maids, nanny’s, etc). Nothing wrong with it I suppose, just not my jam and not how I want my children raised and not the people I want as my neighbors and peers. I’ve always been much more envious of those unsuspecting rich people that drive clunker cars or live in modest homes and mow their own lawns but then you find out they paid for 16 grand children to go to college or something random like that. That’s the kind of thing I’d rather be known for than the guy with the Ferrari or yacht (even if they weren’t mutually exclusive).
  - etrautmann 9mo ago
    +1. I’ve always looked up to the hedge fund manager driving a civic and those who sneakily donate enormous amounts anonymously.
    - Teknomadix 9mo ago
      Life goals!
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - zwnow 9mo ago
    > I’ve been tempted to by exotic cars as an example but have found if I just rent one for a day or two that urge goes away, it’s just a toy to me > I don’t want other people seeing me as flaunting wealth Lmao.
- tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
  His inspiration is a big reason why I still drive my 1993 Honda Civic after owning it for 15 years. I bought it for $1000 after graduating college. I say a little prayer every time I turn the key that it actually starts. I gave it its own github repo where I track the maintenance I do on it. It reminds me where I come from, and that I don't need shiny shit to be happy. I believe this to be a virtue. My girlfriend years ago thought it was incredible and amusing that I was working a fancy tech job and drove this old car around. We are now happily married. These days, I could buy a Bentley with cash. But I don't need one. Warren Buffet's example is an inspiration that should be followed by more people who go into debt buying crap they can't afford with money they don't have in order to look rich.
  - beegeezuz 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - ymyms 9mo ago
    Driving a car that old puts yourself and others on the road at greater risk due to lack of safety features compared to a modern car. One could argue being able to afford a new car and not buying one to extoll other virtues is neglecting your own and communal good.
    - tonis2 9mo ago
      Safety features like tracking where you are, and requiring a subscription for seat heating ? I just think the everything connected to cloud approach sucks, but Im communal danger now.
    - _yb2s 9mo ago
      If you’re afraid to carefully drive a high quality and well maintained older car that was designed from the ground up with safety and quality at the absolute forefront- say an 80s Mercedes or Volvo, you would benefit from relaxing a bit and being willing to take slightly more risk in life. Besides, I am not wholly convinced that improved safety tech is a replacement for the type of safety first engineering used in every tiny detail of those old cars, that mitigate certain types of accidents and injury that won’t be addressed in crash testing.
- solatic 9mo ago
  The key to a happy life is to learn how to reduce the amount of things you own and how to build strong relationships. Once you have enough to put a roof over your head and food on your table, more than that can only be used to purchase increasing amounts of comfort, which is not the same as increasing amounts of happiness. YouTube has plenty of videos of people calling in with hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year in income and somehow they are still broke and in debt. Live below your means, save the excess income into an investment portfolio, keep doing that until you have enough money to live off the interest. Don't even think about buying a Rolex until you have so much money coming in from interest that you don't even know what else to do with it. Even then, remember that the Rolex, like anything else, requires maintenance, but that if you make someone else happy, they can take care of themselves.
wickedsight 9mo ago
> - He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old. Really makes me wonder what drives him. For many people it's the money, but with him it doesn't seem that way. But I haven't read too much about him, so if anyone has insight I'd love to hear about it.
- chihuahua 9mo ago
  For some people, money is not for buying things, but just for keeping score. That can make it rewarding and addictive to accumulate money, even if you don't buy anything (like a giant house) with it. The score keeping aspect makes it interesting, just like playing tennis while keeping score is more interesting than just hitting a ball back and forth across the net without counting.
  - JKCalhoun 9mo ago
    Yeah, I kind of agree. I read Andrew Tobias's (did I get the apostrophe right?) book on investing and he made a point very early on: the people who are rich like money. No, not like you and I like money, they like money the way you and I like fishing, or reading, or hiking or whatever. It's their hobby, their love, the thing they like to learn about, read about… Warren Buffett wouldn't be where he was if he wasn't obsessed with money. But to your point, that doesn't have to translate to material goods: the bigger house, yachts, etc.
  - creato 9mo ago
    Maybe he just likes building things that others find useful. When I was younger I rented furniture from a company called CORT. I happened to notice on the contract or receipt or something, that it was a Berkshire company (I didn't know that before then). If I were Warren Buffet, I would have been happy to know that someone was a satisfied customer of one of his companies. I got some decent furniture for a few months at a reasonable price. Just like I'm happy when someone is a satisfied user of my software.
    - wahnfrieden 9mo ago
TehCorwiz 9mo ago
The house he bought at 28 is 3500 square feet in a very very nice neighborhood and was worth $1.2 million a few years ago. It's humble by billionaire standards, not by average person standards. He never needed to size-up because of children, or size-down because of a bad economy, he was already set for both space and finances. Let's not create a moralistic myth out of his lack of need.
- santoshalper 9mo ago
  I think it's more that he didn't build a gaudy billionaire mansion, even though he easily could have.
- WaxProlix 9mo ago
  It's insanely humble by billionaire standards. Any FAANG SWE over 30 or so in the United States can get that. Contrast with multiple compounds, entire islands, etc.
  - rapidfl 9mo ago
    Buffet surely made lots of upgrades and has added plenty of material comforts. But it is quite possible to be a kind of lazy where even 10-20x current wealth, people would live where they currently live. American neighborhoods are reasonable that way. It is just primary home and they would holiday/vacation wherever.
    - tmule 9mo ago
      It is highly unusual for someone to stay put after their net worth increases tenfold. Normally, you would expect an individual to seek out more elite social circles and embrace a significantly more opulent lifestyle. Not having that isn’t a sign of laziness (one can be certain that someone like Warren Buffett lives exactly as he chooses) but rather a reflection of the rare ability to decide that what he has is already enough.
  - brcmthrowaway 9mo ago
    Not the daily FAANG SWE injection
anonu 9mo ago
He said he would keep writing at least once a year.
kamaal 9mo ago
>>Here are some things Buffet has done that I admire (notice that phrasing): Perhaps the best thing Buffet has managed to do is to live long. Most of compounding magic begins at ages 60-65, a time where most investors start to die out. Second best thing he did was to start/acquire a insurance firm. The 'float' helps them to run a kind of in house index fund on other peoples money, without having to pay TERs/Fees. Thats basically no effort bogle style compounding. Even if you end with a situation where you have to return ALL the premiums collected, you still get to keep the returns. Other wise everything else is just fairly normal, if you are sitting in front of charts for long, its impossible to miss something that's going up on a weekly timeframe for long periods of time. You just pyramid upwards and wait, patiently. The real issue is waiting doesn't work too well for most people as you start to die out after 60.
- hn_throwaway_99 9mo ago
  > Most of compounding magic begins at ages 60-65, a time where most investors start to die out. Percentage-wise, few wealthy investors are dying out at ages of 60-65. In the US, males that make it to age 60 have a life expectancy of 81-82. But that's across all men - life expectancy is strongly correlated with wealth in the US, so a man in the top 1% could very reasonably expect to live to very late 80s/90s. Nevermind that Buffet was still fabulously rich when he was 60, so none of your logic makes any sense to me.
  - kamaal 9mo ago
    >>none of your logic makes any sense to me. Compounding is a function of time. More time you are alive, more you see in that time. This follows from definition of compounding itself.
    - notahacker 9mo ago
      Nobody doubts how compounding works. They doubt the logic of using that to argue that someone achieving a sustained CAGR of nearly 20% over decades and being recognised by peers as the greatest money manager of the twentieth century when he was already one of the world's richest man in his sixties actually achieved "fairly normal" performance mostly down to living a long time.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
nicechianti 9mo ago
[dead]
EliRivers 9mo ago
"He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old." Good for him. Big savings right there. Buying/selling/moving house can cost a fortune.
- mschuster91 9mo ago
  ... which makes the need for rent control and renter protection laws obvious. When people have the "choice" between paying their landlord 5k more just because the landlord can or spending 5-10k on finding a new home and moving, landlords have all the cards.
  - tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
    Somebody needs to get out of the city. SF and NYC are the only two places in the US where rent control makes any sense whatsoever. And it's to solve a problem that was largely created... by rent control. Once you start you can't stop.
  - itake 9mo ago
    Renter control is the "got mine, lets pull the ladder up" version of Nimby-ism for renters. Amazing for Grandma to pay $500/mo to live alone in a 2b Manhattan where she raised her family. Terrible for the young families try to find their own 2b bedroom to start their family. [0] - higher paying, emotionally rewarding, etc.
tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
Sure -- but as far as idols go, you could do a lot worse than Mr. Buffett
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 9mo ago
  It's OK to have someone to look up to and have an example to follow, but why do you need to have an idol?
  - tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
    I don't know, why are humans so bound by human nature? What a question!
  - skjadhs 9mo ago
    Some people just do
  - epolanski 9mo ago
    I think that a role model is a good reference point, a pivot. You may ask yourself, what would X do and why, and that could help you clarify your own views.
  - lazide 9mo ago
    It depends on how much you believe other people’s stated public persona. If you believe it, then it helps model other areas of life in a way that undoubtably supports the outcome. For example, not part of Mr Buffets persona (and I believe it!) is staying up until 2am getting wasted and having 5 baby mommas. And so anyone trying to have even a shadow of Mr. buffets success should probably also avoid doing so, and perhaps do some of what Mr. buffet does instead. Like reading the financial papers. To give one example.
    - Ghos3t 9mo ago
      Yes of course there's only one way to have a succefull life and one should just follow what others before them have already done, in order to be successful, who needs to think for themselves and make choices, just read the financial papers make a lot of money and then when you are dead and forgotten by the world at least you will have all your money to comfort you in the afterlife
deleted 9mo ago
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zwnow 9mo ago
> Our society has become moralistic Which is extremely important. It's important to call out highly immoral behavior and lifestyles. Being a billionaire by itself is highly immoral. These people sleep like babies while people starve to death. > He consistently communicated with shareholders of Berkshire in a straight-forward and transparent way in his letters and annual reports. We praising for the bare minimum now?
- pembrook 9mo ago
  If we're going to assign moral value to people based on their wealth (a classic logical fallacy), then I think you need to take a look in the mirror. The global median income is $2,760 annually. You sleep like a baby making likely 10-100X that, all while people are starving to death. What are you doing to help the starving poor with your vast wealth? Are you not also morally bankrupt yourself, using your own logic? While you're joining the current bolshevik revival that the populist left is trying to spin up, I just hope you remember the kulaks (the land-owning peasants) and many of the Serednyaks (the middle class peasants) also got murdered in the revolution. I'd keep any claims of moral superiority to myself if I were you.
  - zwnow 9mo ago
    Sorry but I am not retarded enough to compare my income to a billionaire gaming the system while half of my salary is taken to help exactly the people who cant afford life themselves. The world would be a much better place if billionaires got taxed as much as regular people. By percent not in absolute numbers obviously.
    - pembrook 9mo ago
      The vast majority of billionaires don't get wealthy by 'gaming the system' and if that were the case and you simply could just game the system, why isn't there more of them? Also, you still haven't explained how you're morally superior by being in the top 10% of global earners vs. the top .01%, while people are starving. Using your logic about how you think the world works, you've clearly gamed the system to take more for yourself. Billionaires are subject to the exact same tax laws as you. What you're likely referring to is the discrepancy in taxation of capital gains vs. income and the use of debt to borrow against assets. But you then have to contend with the fact pretty much every successful country in the world taxes capital less than income at a certain point. And nobody taxes debt. Why? Because it incentivizes risk taking and investment in businesses (a value multiplier) vs. the non-scalable activity of selling your hours as an employee past a certain point. What you perceive as "immoral" activity (investment and entrepreneurship) is the risk-taking that makes the economy function and grow, which benefits everyone. Even your perceived socialist utopia, the Nordics (where I live) taxes capital gains less than income. I think you may want to investigate whether this is a Chestertons fence before loudly shouting about remaking the world on an emotional impulse and calling me a bootlicker.
Yokohiii 9mo ago
I think moralism is an side effect of the demise of spiritualism in the west. We somehow have to shape moral values, the lack of a framework for it makes it feel blunt and chaotic. That being said, I find it odd to moralize on moralism. We have way too many people in power that are awful humans and do a bad job and never get punished. Meanwhile, stealing a car because you are hungry can be the begin of a ruined life. There is no balance. (This isn't about buffet, idc, just about your interwoven opinion.)
- gpt5 9mo ago
  The point is that moralism makes everyone blind and see in black and white. Instead of seeing the nuance, you’d see everything that comes out of Elon Musk or Israel whoever you’ve managed to convince yourself is that current villain, as bad - without attention to details. More than that - you’d waste your time arguing whether they are “good” or “bad”, instead of focusing on specific actions, which is what society as a whole seems to enjoy seem to gravitate towards, and what increases polarization and reduce proper discourse.
  - cindyllm 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - Ghos3t 9mo ago
    Lol I don't think people had to convince themselves of anything regarding the examples you sited, they let everyone know who they are on their own
  - Yokohiii 9mo ago
    I have a huge problem with your use of "moralism" as a term. For me it appears to be used pejoratively as an act to weaken the concept of morals at large. (Which isn't your invention but something you probably picked up.) We made a machine that is driven by emotions and rewards short and exaggerated interactions. On the surface it's black and white, but in each such situations there is also nuanced discussions and people that reflect things. I often also carry such moral debates to friends, I assume others do as well. There is at least a portion of nuance. Saying it's always black and white, is black and white thinking itself. What I would agree with is that groupthink is a problem. People choose sides depending on who or which group said it. Also virtue signalling, as it's often just (unconscious) reputation management and hinders progress.
tialaramex 9mo ago
Right. This is why I believe we should not build statues of people, only of ideas.
larrydag 9mo ago
Adding the letter archive into a LLM prompt is a good read. you can use this as a source https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html
corpoposter 9mo ago
I agree that more personal growth can be taken from reviewing other's behavior rather than analysis of their "overall morality". However, when people are powerful and their actions effect many people it is very important to reflect on the morality of their actions. Holding powerful people and institutions to account for the morality of their actions can and has been a powerful force for good.
MuffinFlavored 9mo ago
> He consistently communicated with shareholders of Berkshire in a straight-forward and transparent way in his letters and annual reports. How often did he ever deliver "bad news"?
ruszki 9mo ago
> He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old. What does “living” mean in this case? That can mean absolutely nothing. I travel a lot (and probably Buffet too), and tax authorities would have a headache with what should I pay and to whom if I reported it completely to them when and where I am. In the country where I officially live I’m maybe 20-30%. There is no other countries with more. The simple case of 50%+1 days is nowhere near. In Buffet case, it can be even less. 10 years ago I had a different pattern. I wasn’t at home but in the same country (in the case of the US, like a state) at random places like 80-90%. So does Buffet really live there, like properly?
lisbbb 9mo ago
How many days a year did Buffet live in that house, though? I suspect he was always on the move such that the home base never actually mattered. Same as Musk.

by sethev 9mo ago

xeromal 9mo ago

I appreciate this viewpoint. Thanks for sharing.

twodave 9mo ago

I agree, however I don’t think the last two of your bullets are necessarily something to learn from on the surface.

rhubarbtree 9mo ago
Disagree. The last one is important. You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy.
- twodave 9mo ago
  This is what I’m talking about. You’re assuming a lot about why and how people move.
  - UqWBcuFx6NV4r 9mo ago
    Nowhere did anybody say “moving house for any reason is bad”. Buffet could’ve moved if he wanted to, I presume. So, evidently, he didn’t have any of those ‘other reasons’. What we *can^ say is that he didn’t move, which shows that he didn’t allow lifestyle inflation to extend to his place of residence.
    - twodave 9mo ago
      No they said we can all learn from it. I understood the implication, I just reject the stated idea that that lesson is to “live in one house for your entire adult life”.
- brk 9mo ago
  Though Buffet has kept that first house, he also bought several others along the way.
- KPGv2 9mo ago
  It will if you have had four children after 28yo.
- deleted 9mo ago
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- JKCalhoun 9mo ago
  It's true (I live in Omaha). He is still in the same house. I didn't grow up here—my wife did. Very early on, when I first visited Omaha, she drove me by his place. After three decades or so in California, I retired and we moved back to her hometown. Buffett is still there.
  - theonething 9mo ago
    Like anyone can just drive up to his house? Doesn't seem safe for such a high profile billionaire's residence to be so accessible.
    - matthewbauer 9mo ago
      I went by it a few weeks ago. There's a gate on the driveway, and I assume some kind of security presence. Probably no different than anyone under constant public scrutiny.
    - tstrimple 9mo ago
      Wait until you learn about the Hollywood Hills! I'm so excited for you.
- ronbenton 9mo ago
  >You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Well that seems like an assumption! Plenty of people are happier with nicer things. I don't think we need to tell people what should make them happy.
  - incanus77 9mo ago
    Sure, but wisdom can be shared about what is less likely to make you happy.
  - dorfsmay 9mo ago
    But commercialism keeps telling people that only nicer things can make them happy.
  - joquarky 9mo ago
    That happy feeling only lasts about six weeks. Happiness is unsustainable. However, contentment is an attainable goal.
    - artdigital 9mo ago
      I bought a bigger nicer TV (the biggest I ever bought) about 4 years ago and it still brings me joy to this day every time I use it So no, not only 6 weeks
      - globular-toast 9mo ago
        My 14" portable CRT I had when I was a teenager gave me joy every time I used it. My first car cost me less than 2k and gave me joy for 5 years. You are now unable to get joy from a TV smaller than the largest one you've ever bought. Many people are unable to get joy from a car costing under 10k, let alone 2k. The things you own end up owning you.
        nl 9mo ago
        You are putting words in their mouth there. You seem very sure about what does and doesn't make other people happy!
- inetknght 9mo ago
  > You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Speak for yourself. There are a lot of aspects to being happy, and having to not want for things certainly helps.
  - BuckRogers 9mo ago
    But you can do that without any money.
    - Nevermark 9mo ago
      > You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever > But you can do that without any money. Well... Material things can contribute to happiness, or detract. Balancing the things we spend our life on, relative to an understanding of what makes us happy, is going to be an idiosyncratic exercise. Assuming that X won't contribute to the happiness of person Y is some deep projection. There seem to be many kinds of happiness too. Would I remain happy if I lost my house? Yes. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that. But would I feel as fulfilled? No. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that.
      - BuckRogers 9mo ago
        Very disingenuous answer. That's not what I was responding to. I was responding to this- There are a lot of aspects to being happy, and having to not want for things certainly helps. I would give you a better answer here but it appears you thought misquoting the conversation was clever so I'll simply leave you corrected.
  - _heimdall 9mo ago
    You will never not want for things, no matter how much you have.
    - spectralista 9mo ago
      It is actually the opposite. The less things you have, the less things you will want. I even experience this with food. If I am on a strict diet for 2 weeks and then have a "cheat" meal, a previously normal meal feels like a satisfying feast. If I splurge on food for 2 weeks, even 3/4th a pizza doesn't satisfy. I just want the other 1/4th. It is really why we have so much wealth as a society but so much discontent. It is like believing there is some amount of alcohol that would satisfy the alcoholic. It just grows the desire for more while contentment is harder and harder to achieve. I am pretty sure this is just a property of the dopaminergic system.
- dheera 9mo ago
  Meh. If you have the resources, buy whatever makes you happy. If a bigger house makes you happy because you have space for your hobbies and you don't need to fight with your family members for space, buy a bigger house. The whole "money doesn't bring happiness" thing is bullshit unless you are a Buddha. A mansion in Malibu isn't going to make me happy, because I wouldn't know what the hell to do in Malibu. An upgrade from a 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom home with a garage so I don't have to smell laser cutter fumes anymore and hack a ventilation system out a bedroom window? That very well might.
  - scott_w 9mo ago
    > An upgrade from a 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom home with a garage so I don't have to smell laser cutter fumes anymore and hack a ventilation system out a bedroom window? That very well might. As someone who upgraded from a 2 bedroom flat to a 3 bedroom house with a garage, I concur. Having a place to store my bikes and other “dirty” tools that’s not inside was such an improvement to my quality of life that I tell people to always look for a half decent garage when they buy. Especially if they also like cycling!
- dilawar 9mo ago
  "Happiness can't buy me money" -- Some actor
- cortesoft 9mo ago
  Yeah, but if the first house you buy is a two bedroom at 28 when you are single, it isn't bad to buy a bigger house when you have a family and 3 kids.
- scott_w 9mo ago
  That’s because you haven’t tried buying better bicycles. I assure you that every new bike I buy makes me happier.
  - globular-toast 9mo ago
    It doesn't make you happier, it's just that you became unhappy and the new bike was necessary to temporarily make you happy again. Happiness is binary. You're either happy with where you are or where you're heading or you're not.
    - scott_w 9mo ago
      > It doesn't make you happier It sounds to me like you haven’t rode a bike in a long time. I recommend you try it and get back to me.
      - globular-toast 9mo ago
        I own several and have ridden thousands upon thousands of miles. When I got my first bike as a kid, a cheap "mountain bike" with 24" wheels that probably weighed more than my current road bike, I was at maximum happiness. I was not at only 40% happiness because it didn't have a carbon frame or a Di2 groupset from the future. I was at 100. Later when I got my first road bike I was at 100% happiness again. But nothing can make me happier than I was with that first, heavy bicycle-shaped object. It might equal it but it's impossible to surpass.
- Jare 9mo ago
  Kinda depends on the size of your current one.
- chollida1 9mo ago
  > You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Hard disagree here. Ask a 4 person family stuffed into a one bedroom condo if buying a larger 3 bedroom home would make them happier, I'd imagine to 99.99999% of them the answer is yes. I upgraded my road bike 2 years ago from an entry level one to a nice racing bike and each weekend I ride a 100km route, that sure as heck makes me happier than riding the old slower and heavier bike. We just took our extended family on a vacation for a week. Money sure as heck made us happier in that instance. It is true that cash can't fix all issues in life but any one who says money can't make you happy is either lying or doesn't have money. Run a simple thought experiment in your head. If you woke up tomorrow under crushing credit card and medical debt and it was suddenly paid off, would that make you happier?
_heimdall 9mo ago
Avoiding scaling your lifestyle with tour current wealth seems like an extremely important lesson people could learn here. Very few people know what "enough" means to them. Its probably worth noting that I mean "enough" in the context of consumption and physical goods. "Enough" wealth doesn't really matter, its only a number in a database or a piece of paper until you spend it.
- pm90 9mo ago
  To a certain extent this is true. You shouldn’t be going into debt just because your income level allows you to get more loans etc. But once you reach a certain income threshold it doesn’t really matter. So what was the point of him living a frugal, simple lifestyle? I would argue that its just something he was used to and found joy in, and thats ok. Some people like that. Others might want to use their money to unlock new experiences that come with it. Thats ok too.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - throwmeoutplzdo 9mo ago
    Sure, and of course the elephant in the room is overconsumption and planetary overload, which get unlocked too on a bigger scale as a result of similar thinking. Which ends does unlocking potentially endless ”experiences” serve? Our personal disconnect from nature is not separate from our collective disconnect from nature.
- crossroadsguy 9mo ago
  Not only that, but it’s important. Needless to say I am not comparing net-worths :) My rent spend started increasing around 4-5th year (steeply) of starting my first job and I saw it and kinda stopped/curbed it at somewhere like 7th year. It has remained there (give or take) because it had reached a really good level (below luxury or ultra premium so to speak) wrt my city’s general rental trends and spends (of course inflation factored in). It’s been 8 years since and I have been without a job for last two years (a bit by choice, if certain things can really be called choice) and pretty much my other spending trends also kinda plateaued around those years (experience spends kept going up slowly but I find them easier to manage). I can’t explain how much it has helped me when I have been living on savings for straight 2 years now. Not just the specific relative smaller amount but more so the predictability of it.
conductr 9mo ago
The last one is key to my entire value system as a person. I have had some financial wins in life and try not to let it impact my day to day. I avoid, sometimes with great effort, flashy things (I’ve been tempted to by exotic cars as an example but have found if I just rent one for a day or two that urge goes away, it’s just a toy to me). I usually say I’m not materialistic, but I am at times, and what I strive to be is humble, modest, and invisible. I don’t want other people seeing me as flaunting wealth. It’s not who I want to be or how I want my kids to see me act. That said, I do, like Buffet, live in a nice house. I’m not depriving myself. But it’s also very approachable by any successful employee of a company (maybe salary of a director or VP of any large company could afford it). It doesn’t represent what I could afford if I wanted to really get into the elite neighborhoods of my city. I don’t really enjoy people in those areas. They tend to always talk about money in one way or another (vacations, private schools, cars, houses, maids, nanny’s, etc). Nothing wrong with it I suppose, just not my jam and not how I want my children raised and not the people I want as my neighbors and peers. I’ve always been much more envious of those unsuspecting rich people that drive clunker cars or live in modest homes and mow their own lawns but then you find out they paid for 16 grand children to go to college or something random like that. That’s the kind of thing I’d rather be known for than the guy with the Ferrari or yacht (even if they weren’t mutually exclusive).
- etrautmann 9mo ago
  +1. I’ve always looked up to the hedge fund manager driving a civic and those who sneakily donate enormous amounts anonymously.
  - Teknomadix 9mo ago
    Life goals!
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- zwnow 9mo ago
  > I’ve been tempted to by exotic cars as an example but have found if I just rent one for a day or two that urge goes away, it’s just a toy to me > I don’t want other people seeing me as flaunting wealth Lmao.
tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
His inspiration is a big reason why I still drive my 1993 Honda Civic after owning it for 15 years. I bought it for $1000 after graduating college. I say a little prayer every time I turn the key that it actually starts. I gave it its own github repo where I track the maintenance I do on it. It reminds me where I come from, and that I don't need shiny shit to be happy. I believe this to be a virtue. My girlfriend years ago thought it was incredible and amusing that I was working a fancy tech job and drove this old car around. We are now happily married. These days, I could buy a Bentley with cash. But I don't need one. Warren Buffet's example is an inspiration that should be followed by more people who go into debt buying crap they can't afford with money they don't have in order to look rich.
- beegeezuz 9mo ago
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- ymyms 9mo ago
  Driving a car that old puts yourself and others on the road at greater risk due to lack of safety features compared to a modern car. One could argue being able to afford a new car and not buying one to extoll other virtues is neglecting your own and communal good.
  - tonis2 9mo ago
    Safety features like tracking where you are, and requiring a subscription for seat heating ? I just think the everything connected to cloud approach sucks, but Im communal danger now.
  - _yb2s 9mo ago
    If you’re afraid to carefully drive a high quality and well maintained older car that was designed from the ground up with safety and quality at the absolute forefront- say an 80s Mercedes or Volvo, you would benefit from relaxing a bit and being willing to take slightly more risk in life. Besides, I am not wholly convinced that improved safety tech is a replacement for the type of safety first engineering used in every tiny detail of those old cars, that mitigate certain types of accidents and injury that won’t be addressed in crash testing.
solatic 9mo ago
The key to a happy life is to learn how to reduce the amount of things you own and how to build strong relationships. Once you have enough to put a roof over your head and food on your table, more than that can only be used to purchase increasing amounts of comfort, which is not the same as increasing amounts of happiness. YouTube has plenty of videos of people calling in with hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year in income and somehow they are still broke and in debt. Live below your means, save the excess income into an investment portfolio, keep doing that until you have enough money to live off the interest. Don't even think about buying a Rolex until you have so much money coming in from interest that you don't even know what else to do with it. Even then, remember that the Rolex, like anything else, requires maintenance, but that if you make someone else happy, they can take care of themselves.

wickedsight 9mo ago

> - He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old. Really makes me wonder what drives him. For many people it's the money, but with him it doesn't seem that way. But I haven't read too much about him, so if anyone has insight I'd love to hear about it.

chihuahua 9mo ago
For some people, money is not for buying things, but just for keeping score. That can make it rewarding and addictive to accumulate money, even if you don't buy anything (like a giant house) with it. The score keeping aspect makes it interesting, just like playing tennis while keeping score is more interesting than just hitting a ball back and forth across the net without counting.
- JKCalhoun 9mo ago
  Yeah, I kind of agree. I read Andrew Tobias's (did I get the apostrophe right?) book on investing and he made a point very early on: the people who are rich like money. No, not like you and I like money, they like money the way you and I like fishing, or reading, or hiking or whatever. It's their hobby, their love, the thing they like to learn about, read about… Warren Buffett wouldn't be where he was if he wasn't obsessed with money. But to your point, that doesn't have to translate to material goods: the bigger house, yachts, etc.
- creato 9mo ago
  Maybe he just likes building things that others find useful. When I was younger I rented furniture from a company called CORT. I happened to notice on the contract or receipt or something, that it was a Berkshire company (I didn't know that before then). If I were Warren Buffet, I would have been happy to know that someone was a satisfied customer of one of his companies. I got some decent furniture for a few months at a reasonable price. Just like I'm happy when someone is a satisfied user of my software.
  - wahnfrieden 9mo ago

TehCorwiz 9mo ago

The house he bought at 28 is 3500 square feet in a very very nice neighborhood and was worth $1.2 million a few years ago. It's humble by billionaire standards, not by average person standards. He never needed to size-up because of children, or size-down because of a bad economy, he was already set for both space and finances. Let's not create a moralistic myth out of his lack of need.

santoshalper 9mo ago
I think it's more that he didn't build a gaudy billionaire mansion, even though he easily could have.
WaxProlix 9mo ago
It's insanely humble by billionaire standards. Any FAANG SWE over 30 or so in the United States can get that. Contrast with multiple compounds, entire islands, etc.
- rapidfl 9mo ago
  Buffet surely made lots of upgrades and has added plenty of material comforts. But it is quite possible to be a kind of lazy where even 10-20x current wealth, people would live where they currently live. American neighborhoods are reasonable that way. It is just primary home and they would holiday/vacation wherever.
  - tmule 9mo ago
    It is highly unusual for someone to stay put after their net worth increases tenfold. Normally, you would expect an individual to seek out more elite social circles and embrace a significantly more opulent lifestyle. Not having that isn’t a sign of laziness (one can be certain that someone like Warren Buffett lives exactly as he chooses) but rather a reflection of the rare ability to decide that what he has is already enough.
- brcmthrowaway 9mo ago
  Not the daily FAANG SWE injection

anonu 9mo ago

He said he would keep writing at least once a year.

kamaal 9mo ago

>>Here are some things Buffet has done that I admire (notice that phrasing): Perhaps the best thing Buffet has managed to do is to live long. Most of compounding magic begins at ages 60-65, a time where most investors start to die out. Second best thing he did was to start/acquire a insurance firm. The 'float' helps them to run a kind of in house index fund on other peoples money, without having to pay TERs/Fees. Thats basically no effort bogle style compounding. Even if you end with a situation where you have to return ALL the premiums collected, you still get to keep the returns. Other wise everything else is just fairly normal, if you are sitting in front of charts for long, its impossible to miss something that's going up on a weekly timeframe for long periods of time. You just pyramid upwards and wait, patiently. The real issue is waiting doesn't work too well for most people as you start to die out after 60.

hn_throwaway_99 9mo ago
> Most of compounding magic begins at ages 60-65, a time where most investors start to die out. Percentage-wise, few wealthy investors are dying out at ages of 60-65. In the US, males that make it to age 60 have a life expectancy of 81-82. But that's across all men - life expectancy is strongly correlated with wealth in the US, so a man in the top 1% could very reasonably expect to live to very late 80s/90s. Nevermind that Buffet was still fabulously rich when he was 60, so none of your logic makes any sense to me.
- kamaal 9mo ago
  >>none of your logic makes any sense to me. Compounding is a function of time. More time you are alive, more you see in that time. This follows from definition of compounding itself.
  - notahacker 9mo ago
    Nobody doubts how compounding works. They doubt the logic of using that to argue that someone achieving a sustained CAGR of nearly 20% over decades and being recognised by peers as the greatest money manager of the twentieth century when he was already one of the world's richest man in his sixties actually achieved "fairly normal" performance mostly down to living a long time.

deleted 9mo ago

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nicechianti 9mo ago

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EliRivers 9mo ago

"He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old." Good for him. Big savings right there. Buying/selling/moving house can cost a fortune.

mschuster91 9mo ago
... which makes the need for rent control and renter protection laws obvious. When people have the "choice" between paying their landlord 5k more just because the landlord can or spending 5-10k on finding a new home and moving, landlords have all the cards.
- tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
  Somebody needs to get out of the city. SF and NYC are the only two places in the US where rent control makes any sense whatsoever. And it's to solve a problem that was largely created... by rent control. Once you start you can't stop.
- itake 9mo ago
  Renter control is the "got mine, lets pull the ladder up" version of Nimby-ism for renters. Amazing for Grandma to pay $500/mo to live alone in a 2b Manhattan where she raised her family. Terrible for the young families try to find their own 2b bedroom to start their family. [0] - higher paying, emotionally rewarding, etc.

tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago

Sure -- but as far as idols go, you could do a lot worse than Mr. Buffett

rTX5CMRXIfFG 9mo ago
It's OK to have someone to look up to and have an example to follow, but why do you need to have an idol?
- tjwebbnorfolk 9mo ago
  I don't know, why are humans so bound by human nature? What a question!
- skjadhs 9mo ago
  Some people just do
- epolanski 9mo ago
  I think that a role model is a good reference point, a pivot. You may ask yourself, what would X do and why, and that could help you clarify your own views.
- lazide 9mo ago
  It depends on how much you believe other people’s stated public persona. If you believe it, then it helps model other areas of life in a way that undoubtably supports the outcome. For example, not part of Mr Buffets persona (and I believe it!) is staying up until 2am getting wasted and having 5 baby mommas. And so anyone trying to have even a shadow of Mr. buffets success should probably also avoid doing so, and perhaps do some of what Mr. buffet does instead. Like reading the financial papers. To give one example.
  - Ghos3t 9mo ago
    Yes of course there's only one way to have a succefull life and one should just follow what others before them have already done, in order to be successful, who needs to think for themselves and make choices, just read the financial papers make a lot of money and then when you are dead and forgotten by the world at least you will have all your money to comfort you in the afterlife

deleted 9mo ago

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zwnow 9mo ago

> Our society has become moralistic Which is extremely important. It's important to call out highly immoral behavior and lifestyles. Being a billionaire by itself is highly immoral. These people sleep like babies while people starve to death. > He consistently communicated with shareholders of Berkshire in a straight-forward and transparent way in his letters and annual reports. We praising for the bare minimum now?

pembrook 9mo ago
If we're going to assign moral value to people based on their wealth (a classic logical fallacy), then I think you need to take a look in the mirror. The global median income is $2,760 annually. You sleep like a baby making likely 10-100X that, all while people are starving to death. What are you doing to help the starving poor with your vast wealth? Are you not also morally bankrupt yourself, using your own logic? While you're joining the current bolshevik revival that the populist left is trying to spin up, I just hope you remember the kulaks (the land-owning peasants) and many of the Serednyaks (the middle class peasants) also got murdered in the revolution. I'd keep any claims of moral superiority to myself if I were you.
- zwnow 9mo ago
  Sorry but I am not retarded enough to compare my income to a billionaire gaming the system while half of my salary is taken to help exactly the people who cant afford life themselves. The world would be a much better place if billionaires got taxed as much as regular people. By percent not in absolute numbers obviously.
  - pembrook 9mo ago
    The vast majority of billionaires don't get wealthy by 'gaming the system' and if that were the case and you simply could just game the system, why isn't there more of them? Also, you still haven't explained how you're morally superior by being in the top 10% of global earners vs. the top .01%, while people are starving. Using your logic about how you think the world works, you've clearly gamed the system to take more for yourself. Billionaires are subject to the exact same tax laws as you. What you're likely referring to is the discrepancy in taxation of capital gains vs. income and the use of debt to borrow against assets. But you then have to contend with the fact pretty much every successful country in the world taxes capital less than income at a certain point. And nobody taxes debt. Why? Because it incentivizes risk taking and investment in businesses (a value multiplier) vs. the non-scalable activity of selling your hours as an employee past a certain point. What you perceive as "immoral" activity (investment and entrepreneurship) is the risk-taking that makes the economy function and grow, which benefits everyone. Even your perceived socialist utopia, the Nordics (where I live) taxes capital gains less than income. I think you may want to investigate whether this is a Chestertons fence before loudly shouting about remaking the world on an emotional impulse and calling me a bootlicker.

Yokohiii 9mo ago

I think moralism is an side effect of the demise of spiritualism in the west. We somehow have to shape moral values, the lack of a framework for it makes it feel blunt and chaotic. That being said, I find it odd to moralize on moralism. We have way too many people in power that are awful humans and do a bad job and never get punished. Meanwhile, stealing a car because you are hungry can be the begin of a ruined life. There is no balance. (This isn't about buffet, idc, just about your interwoven opinion.)

gpt5 9mo ago
The point is that moralism makes everyone blind and see in black and white. Instead of seeing the nuance, you’d see everything that comes out of Elon Musk or Israel whoever you’ve managed to convince yourself is that current villain, as bad - without attention to details. More than that - you’d waste your time arguing whether they are “good” or “bad”, instead of focusing on specific actions, which is what society as a whole seems to enjoy seem to gravitate towards, and what increases polarization and reduce proper discourse.
- cindyllm 9mo ago
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- Ghos3t 9mo ago
  Lol I don't think people had to convince themselves of anything regarding the examples you sited, they let everyone know who they are on their own
- Yokohiii 9mo ago
  I have a huge problem with your use of "moralism" as a term. For me it appears to be used pejoratively as an act to weaken the concept of morals at large. (Which isn't your invention but something you probably picked up.) We made a machine that is driven by emotions and rewards short and exaggerated interactions. On the surface it's black and white, but in each such situations there is also nuanced discussions and people that reflect things. I often also carry such moral debates to friends, I assume others do as well. There is at least a portion of nuance. Saying it's always black and white, is black and white thinking itself. What I would agree with is that groupthink is a problem. People choose sides depending on who or which group said it. Also virtue signalling, as it's often just (unconscious) reputation management and hinders progress.

tialaramex 9mo ago

Right. This is why I believe we should not build statues of people, only of ideas.

larrydag 9mo ago

Adding the letter archive into a LLM prompt is a good read. you can use this as a source https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html

corpoposter 9mo ago

I agree that more personal growth can be taken from reviewing other's behavior rather than analysis of their "overall morality". However, when people are powerful and their actions effect many people it is very important to reflect on the morality of their actions. Holding powerful people and institutions to account for the morality of their actions can and has been a powerful force for good.

MuffinFlavored 9mo ago

> He consistently communicated with shareholders of Berkshire in a straight-forward and transparent way in his letters and annual reports. How often did he ever deliver "bad news"?

ruszki 9mo ago

> He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old. What does “living” mean in this case? That can mean absolutely nothing. I travel a lot (and probably Buffet too), and tax authorities would have a headache with what should I pay and to whom if I reported it completely to them when and where I am. In the country where I officially live I’m maybe 20-30%. There is no other countries with more. The simple case of 50%+1 days is nowhere near. In Buffet case, it can be even less. 10 years ago I had a different pattern. I wasn’t at home but in the same country (in the case of the US, like a state) at random places like 80-90%. So does Buffet really live there, like properly?

lisbbb 9mo ago

How many days a year did Buffet live in that house, though? I suspect he was always on the move such that the home base never actually mattered. Same as Musk.